


Thump

by stars_inthe_sky



Series: Buzzwords [3]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel 616, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-Black Widow Hunt, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s tempting to enjoy this encounter for what it is, but Natasha has never known how to take good things for granted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thump

They’re barely over the threshold of her hotel room before his tongue is halfway down her throat and his hand is snaking up her back underneath her shirt. Most of Natasha’s first times—especially the one-night stands—tend to be sloppy but sufficient, but Barnes handles her the way she’s seen him handle his guns: smoothly, precisely, elegantly, exactly the way the maker intended.

She files this information away for later but decides she’d rather continue to gather intel before commenting on it. It helps that by now his head is between her thighs, and his every muscle movement suggests he’s halfway to ecstasy himself, even though he has to know she could snap his neck with less effort than it takes to tangle her fingers in his shaggy hair.

It’s easily the best sex she can remember ever having had, and writhing against him feels like taking out a room of Russian mobsters—just what her body was made to do. It’s tempting to enjoy that for what it is, but Natasha has never known how to take good things for granted. And this one seems as convenient as their repeated run-ins—which, for all that he’s ostensibly an excellent ally, he has yet to explain well.

Still, her mind blurs into incoherence for a good minute and a half when she reaches climax. She can feel every nerve in her body firing, and something in the way their hips grind together makes her gut churn. It’s vulnerability, she thinks—he could well take her apart at the seams, if she let him.

So she waits until his chests stops heaving and, with him still inside of her, wriggles her hips just a little. It gets his attention. He laughs, looking up to meet her eyes, and his smile fades as he sees the look on her face. She tightens her thighs around him and pins his wrists by his ears; he doesn’t fight back, though he could, and his body goes slack beneath her.

“Whatever it is you’re thinking—”

“I’m thinking you knew just how to fuck me when we walked up here, and I want you to tell me why.”

“Maybe I’m just good at it.” It’s a bluff, and a bad one.

“You know more about me than you should,” she says, voice low and dangerous. To someone else it might sound seductive; they both know it’s not. “So you know what I can do to you. What I _will_ do to you, if you don’t explain yourself. I don’t know you, but you know me. Talk.”

“You do, though. Or, you did. We,” he swallows audibly, “We’ve been here before. Under happier circumstances. Before…before they rooted out your memories of me. For revenge, for—I don’t know why a person would do that. Could do that. But it happened, and you…you were the love of my life, Natalia. Of course I know how to love you. I never wanted to stop.”

She rocks off of him, shrinking to the far end of the bed, as if she’s been pushed. There’s no air in her lungs, suddenly. “That’s not…possible.”

He shrugs and struggles to sitting up. “You wanted the truth. Believe it or don’t. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. Do what you need to, though—it was all because of me, anyway. And I can think of worse ways to go.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” The words are out of her mouth before she can think them, which makes her actively pause before saying, “That’s just not possible. I don’t…I don’t do that. I don’t have _that_. I don’t even have that with my damn cat.”

He pauses, and then he leans toward her hesitantly. “I mean, you _did_. But maybe they took away that part of you, too. I’m so sorry, Natalia.”

He reaches for her hand, presumably in a comforting gesture, but she jerks away, nearly falling off the bed in the process. She’s also suddenly aware that they’re both still entirely naked and covered in each other’s bodily fluids. “Don’t touch me.”

“Right. Sorry.” He retreats back to the headboard. “I’ll just—let me grab my clothes and I’ll go. And I’ll make sure we…stop running into each other. If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t move.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, pointedly not looking at her as he collects his street clothes, “I would never ask you to be someone you’re not, or that you don’t think you are or want to be. But…the not letting anyone in thing? It’s not much of a way to live.”

“Good way not to die, though,” she mutters by rote.

He finishes dressing and pauses before opening the door. “I learned that from you, you know. Living for something besides atonement, for yourself as well as others. Something to think about.”

The door clicks shut behind him, and a blast of cold air rushes in from the hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> No one prompted this, but the idea has been bouncing around my head long enough that it seemed time to write it anyway.


End file.
